Navigating Generation Now, or Generation you!

You know those friends of yours on Facebook who have such awkward statuses that you know you should “hide” them, but you just can’t? They make you feel so uncomfortable, yet it’s become a total conversation piece with your best friends. Catch my drift? So far my (real life) friends and I have witnessed people’s break up statuses, pregnancy announcements, bodily functions, drunken ramblings, painful to do lists, meals, oh and who they just slept with.

So when does it go to far? Why do we post these insignificant blurbs. Because, we’re all attention hungry, dying for the infamous “like” or comment. We do it to feel loved and to spread our awesomeness. I’ll admit, I throw the occasional status update out there. They come in handy and I do love that like button. I do it in moderation, my daily musings, thoughts, and findings are reserved for Twitter. Facebook gets a status from me about once or twice every two weeks.
Facebook statuses have become a key component in the networking site. There are 45 million statuses a day. Yeah I’ll give you that, they’re a big deal. Think about it though, do you really want to share with your 700 friends that your boyfriend is a total scumbag? Share things that you think will add value to people’s mini-feed/live-feed/news-feed/whatever they’re calling it today. Share things that are funny, send the occasional shout-out to your bff, share causes you believe in, congratulate people, let people know what’s exciting about your life.

Oh yes and it is totally mandatory to somehow make your status reference to your birthday on your birthday. Once Facebook moved the birthdays down to the bottom, our “happy birthday” wall posts took a major beating. My crush from the 9th grade no longer wishes me happy birthday, but I might just have a chance if I hint to it in my status.

Guys, our pictures, favorite movies, and relationship status are all up on Facebook for the world to see. Is it really necessary for our latest drunken escapades to be plastered up there as well? Remember, our moms our on Facebook now. Yeah, things just got real awkward.

Are you a compulsive status updater? Then defend yourself here, I want to get your side of the story.

My friends stared at me like I had thirty heads when I proudly announced I had fifty followers on Twitter. “What’s Twitter?” my best friend Miriam asked. Umm, have you been living under a rock? Have you read the New York Times or for that matter our local newspaper, The Portsmouth Herald? Have you used the Internet in the past month? I wanted to shout out all of these questions at once, but I was interrupted by my other friend Marta. “I know what Twitter is, but what exactly is the point?” I stared at here dumbfounded for a second and then I realized something. Out of my 620 friends on Facebook there were only three (including me) who were on Twitter. Odd, I thought, why is this? Why hasn’t the Twitter trend caught on fire like Facebook and Myspace and spread throughout colleges and universities across the country?

I believe I have a pretty diverse group of friends when it comes to demographics. They range from schools from California to Connecticut and are all different ages. For the most part they’re all diehard Facebook users so I would think the signing up for Twitter would be natural. After talking to a couple of my friends I realized that they hadn’t activated Twitter accounts because they didn’t understand how to use it. I mean c’mon my generation, you give us a keyboard and a screen (whether it be a cell phone, computer, or video game) and we’ll figure out how to use it. While we may not be able to absorb our history lesson on Monday, one thing we can figure out are new technology and websites.

“I already am stalked enough…ok and I already stalk enough on Facebook, why should I get something that tells everyone what I am doing at every moment of my day.” First off, the term stalking has developed a whole new meaning after the emergence of Facebook. We now know way too much about our friends lives. We know if that guy were crushing on is single. We know what Amanda had for lunch yesterday. We know at exactly what time Jane broke up with Jake. Ok you get the point, we know everything! With the development of status updates it was taken to a whole new level. At first people didn’t use the status update, it loomed above our homepages confusing us. Then they started to emerge, “back home, sick,” “I can’t believe my heart has been broken,” “about to go out the Chillies with the girlies,” “studying for this dumb physics test,” and they’ve just been getting worst.

We already know way too much about each other and people know too much about us. Another thing about my generation is boy do we have a short attention span. That’s why… we need to get on Twitter. Most of us go online and visit about five websites over and over again, it changes from person to person. Facebook, our school’s portal, Espn.com, Perezhilton.com and Google. Pretty limiting huh? If I could communicate one thing to people my age, get on Twitter because it is such a good resource. I’ve been on it for a little over a month and the websites I’ve been linked to have been awesome and I would have never found them on my own. I am following people who are doing such interesting things. They range from clothing designers to television producers and EVERYTHING in between. I feel like my existence online was boring before I was on Twitter. I was on the same couple of sites, looking at the same kind of content, and literally drooling all over my keyboard with boredom. I found the site http://www.soulpancake.com and it’s awesome! The list goes on and on.

I know we’re weary of Facebook, wondering how if were giving out to much information to the World Wide Web and sick of worrying if were going to find out our boyfriend’s broken up with us from his relationship status. So try something new, get on Twitter and look around a little. You don’t have to update every minute of your life, actually please don’t. Post things you find interesting and update your followers on what your doing that is interesting. Trust me someone out there will agree with you.

You don’t have to worry, no one knows or cares if your single, what type of music you listen to, and who is writing on your wall, you give a bio of 140 words! I am encouraging you all check it out to see what your missing. I’ll admit when I go online, the first thing I check now is Twitter, not Facebook… boy times have changed!